Tag: Coventry

Coventry wins City of Culture 2021 – celebrate working class culture and fight for decent funding

Thursday evening brought news that Coventry has been named the City of Culture 2021.

Coventry Socialist Party welcomes the city’s victory and shares with many the hope that this will bring a much needed boost to the city following year after year of austerity cuts.

We believe it is a great chance to celebrate Coventry’s rich history of working class culture and struggle. From the English Civil War to the Poll Tax, Coventry has been a stronghold of resistance. The phrase “sent to Coventry” comes from the treatment Royalist army prisoner got when imprisoned in Coventry, a stronghold of the Parliamentarian forces – who hoisted their banner on what is now Banner Lane and marched down Cromwell Lane to smash the Royalists!
During both World Wars, women workers in Coventry organised in trade unions to fight for better pay and conditions. Fighting workers also ensured decent jobs in Coventry’s factories, making this the richest working class city in the country.
In the 1980s thousands of Coventry people refused to pay the Poll Tax, which was part of the movement that brought down Thatcher. They also elected Dave Nellist, a “Militant” Labour MP, who said in response to the announcement “Hopefully, at least 50% of events can be designed, developed and grown within the city itself.”

Coventry will be receiving increased funding after this announcement – the council should work out a plan for how this can be used to reopen libraries and other facilities that have closed, closures that limit access to culture and opportunities for Coventry people.

Today the Coventry Telegraph revealed that under the “Sustainability and Transformation Plan”, set to be officially announced on Tuesday, A&E, maternity and children’s care facilities will all be closed at Nuneaton’s George Eliot Hospital.

The Telegraph states that other headline changes include:

Closing the Accident and Emergency department at George Eliot Hospital as well as moving maternity and children’s care to University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW).

Bosses also want more people to have babies at home, there will be restrictions on overweight people and smokers getting non-emergency surgery and increasing the time between hip replacements.

Cancer care is also in line to be reviewed.

Stroke care at Warwick Hospital and George Eliot is also set to be moved to Coventry

Further NHS cuts in Nuneaton and Warwick threaten services across the area, including in Coventry. Along with further privatisation this will undermine our health service – the NHS should be completely publicly owned and free at the point of use! Coventry and Nuneaton Socialist Party has a proud history of fighting and helping to stop numerous attacks to the NHS and George Eliot Hospital, from both Tory and New Labour governments, and will continue to campaign to save NHS services.

We will be mobilising for the Health Campaigns Together “It’s Our NHS” demonstration in London on March 4th to bring together the many local campaigns fighting to save NHS services in their area.

If you would like to get involved, get in touch – fill in the form below!

Coventry City fans haven’t had much to celebrate in recent seasons, and today’s BBC Price of Football survey shows that despite that they’ve been paying more money to line the pockets of the club’s hedge fund owners, SISU.

The cheapest match day ticket to watch Cov is 9% above the league average, and the cheapest season ticket is 5% above it. Getting a programme, a pie and a cup of tea will cost you more at the Ricoh than the league average. A child’s shirt will set you back £36, 12% above the league average, and an adult shirt is £45 – the highest in the league!

The mega-rich owners of clubs like CCFC don’t care about football fans, they just want to make money out of our game. Ticket prices in the German Bundesliga are cheaper than tickets to watch Cov – because clubs in Germany are largely owned by fans, who care about the game. Reclaim the game – kick out hedge funds and big businesses!

If you want to read more about the socialist programme for winning back football for the fans – click here to read our Reclaim the Game pamphlet!

Coventry City Council’s Cabinet will meet on Tuesday 30th August to approve the beginning of the consultation that will see further cuts and closures to the tune of £4 million to libraries, the youth service and children’s centres.

Under the programme called “Connecting Communities” the plans from the Labour Council will further reduce vital public services in our city hitting ordinary people the hardest. Read this report for what we think the Council should be doing instead of passing on the Tory cuts to the people of Coventry.

The campaign group Save Coventry Libraries have called a lobby of the Cabinet meeting. The lobby will begin at 1pm, outside the Council House, Earl Street.

The Socialist Party has had a lot of media coverage over the last few weeks, after Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson claimed that Trotskyists were joining the Labour Party and “twisting young arms” to support Jeremy Corbyn. He then submitted a “dossier” to back up his claims, which included reports from Socialist Party members about events they had spoken at. All these reports showed that, rather than secretly joining the party, we are openly attending events as the Socialist Party and putting forward our views – but this didn’t stop the media widely sharing Watson’s claims. These attacks on the Socialist Party, and our predecessor organisation Militant, show how scared the Labour Party right-wing are of genuine socialist ideas.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party has laid the responsibility of Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity at the feet of supposed Trotskyist infiltrators. Why has the Labour Party right wing and the media suddenly become interested in the influence of Leon Trotsky; one of the leaders of the Russian revolution who dedicated his life fighting for socialism and against Stalinism?

The Socialist Party proudly stands in the tradition of Trotsky in fighting for the working class and fighting for democratic socialism.

It was the Socialist Party, then Militant, who led the mass non-payment of the poll tax which was scrapped and led to the defeat of Thatcher.

In recent years Socialist Party members have been at the forefront of fights against privatisation, the bedroom tax and attacks on workers and young people.

It is these ideas that the right are scared of and are trying to discredit.

A programme to improve the lives of majority and a strategy to win. We’re fighting for a different kind of society – a socialist society where the world’s resources are controlled and planned for the good of all not for the profits of a few.

The below article by Coventry Socialist Students member Aidan O’Toole was carried in this weeks issue of The Socialist newspaper. The Tories have planned further attacks on students – students need to organise to fight back.

The Tories want universities that meet their backbreaking ‘teaching excellence framework’ targets to be allowed to increase the cost of their courses with inflation. Universities including Manchester have already announced their fees will rise to £9,250 in 2017, before parliament has even considered the measure.

The future is looking bleak for young people. Houses are unaffordable, jobs are low-paid and insecure, and education is becoming more and more elitist.

Universities received £9 billion in tuition fees last year, the highest amount ever. The government has cut central funding to £3 billion.

Rising tuition fees, along with the end of student grants, are increasingly pushing working class people out of higher education. Working class and some middle class students have to decide if a life of debt is worth a degree, which isn’t a guarantee of employment. And that’s only if they can afford to rent accommodation and feed themselves during the course.

It is no surprise that Jeremy Corbyn’s call last year to scrap tuition fees resonates with so many young people. Anger is clear among students who feel like they are putting themselves in a lot of debt for not much gain. The 2016 Student Academic Experience Survey found that two thirds of students felt their degree didn’t give value for money.

The Socialist Party says education is a right and should be free for all. It should not just be a privilege for the super-rich who can afford extortionate fees and high living costs, relying of the bank of mum and dad. We fight for an end to fees, cuts and closures in higher education, for a living grant for all students, and for the return of EMA student payments in further education.

Members of Coventry Socialist Party were campaigning against library closures over the weekend, with a campaign stall in the City Centre and supporting the Save Coventry Libraries campaign at Arena Park Library.

Over 800 people signed the petition over the day, showing how strongly people object to the councils plan to close libraries across Coventry. Some libraries are threatened with closure altogether while some will be closed unless volunteers come forward to run them. Many staff will lose their jobs.

Arena Park is a well used library, but is scheduled to close on August 27th. While campaigning there on Saturday we found that many service users were not aware that it was closing and that there is no alternative provision.

More than 1000 people have signed the petition in total – Coventry Council should listen and not close libraries!